Inventory drops 20% from 2011

06Apr2012

Posted by Andrew Kantor

Nationwide existing-home inventory is down a bit more than 20% from a year ago, according to the latest numbers from HousingTracker. (NAR’s numbers aren’t out for April, but those usually mirror HousingTracker’s pretty closely.)

A couple of caveats, as always.

It’s the beginning of the year, so inventory will increase in the next few months as it always does.

Inventory has been dropping for a while, so don’t expect big declines to continue — eventually it will hit normal levels.

There’s still that shadow inventory — homes in the REO/foreclosure pipeline — that hasn’t hit the market yet. Who knows what effect that will have?